4.3 Case studies 47
4.3.2 Examples of insignificant growth in e-asTTle raw score 61
was Year Nine and one was Year Ten. The discussions below will explore the differences and
similarities of these two case studies in comparison to the first two.
4.3.2.1 Case Study Three
Case Study Three (CS3) was a Year Nine female who had an eager‐to‐please disposition. Whilst
chatty, she did not present challenging classroom behaviours and always completed set work
to the best of her ability. However, despite wanting to improve her reading achievement, she
did not display the same accelerated growth that CS1 and CS2 demonstrated. CS3 moved 16
raw score points from 1394 to 1410. This was above the normative growth of two raw score
points for Year Nines during term one, but well below the class movement average of 56 raw
score points.
The cause of this difference for CS3 was hard to explain because on the surface, she seemed to
follow the same developmental pattern as the CS1 and CS2. She followed the same modelling
and explanation pattern and bought into strategy use early in her training sessions as this
excerpt from her first session, using Boy Overboard (Gleitzman, 2002), shows:
CS3: [Reading]
Teacher: Do you know a question that I had in my head as I was reading this bit
was why did their house explode?
CS3: Oh, yeah. I was just looking at that.
CS3 saw the importance of the strategies that were explained and modelled for her and
attempted to put them into immediate usage by agreeing with the teacher that thinking about
the differing elements of the text was actually important.
Refinement of the initial superficial engagement with the texts and strategy use soon began to
develop as a result of the ZPD relationship that the training sessions fostered, as this extract,
also from the first training session, demonstrates:
CS3: [Reading]
CS3: Mum, is getting ready I think. ‘Cause it says…oh the dad says, “Mum
wants to go to the city. She’ll meet us there tomorrow.”
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I wonder if she’s safe. ‘Cause it says “Dad takes a deep breath”, like
he’s trying to think what he’s saying, like it’s not an answer that he’s
thinking immediately, eh?
CS3: Yep.
Teacher: Hmmmm.
CS3: [Reading] His mum… oh the dad … oh the mum wants the dad to take
her somewhere safe.
Teacher: Yep. Oh, take the mum somewhere safe? ‘Cause I read that “Mum
wants me to take you” as in Jamal and Bibi. Jamal and Bibi, eh? But
that’s a good question ‘cause that leads you to think, am I checking
what I’m reading, ‘cause that’s a really important thing to do.
[Emphasis added by the speaker]
By gently questioning the student’s summary, which contained some errors in understanding,
the teacher was able to guide CS3 towards a better understanding as well as encourage the
development of the student’s monitoring skills. These types of interactions recurred
throughout all of CS3’s training sessions as, like CS1 and CS2, she required the same strategies
to be explained, modelled and trialled several times before she began to grasp their correct
usage. It was this type of interaction that meant that CS3’s comprehension skills grew in much
the same fashion as CS1 and CS2.
With regular coaching as well as increased challenge and refinement of her skill base, CS3 was
able to engage with texts on a deeper level and more independently. For example, she
spontaneously asked why Jamal’s father was shushing everyone whilst engaged in reading Boy
Overboard (Gleitzman, 2002) during her first training session. In her third training session, CS3
demonstrated that she was increasingly able to monitor her own understanding of the text
and deploy strategies to mend her understanding independently when reading an article about
Anthony Kiedis, the lead vocalist of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (Frances, 2008);
CS3: Why does it say … um… why does it say ‘he grew up in a poor family
and his dad was a drug dealer’? Oh…now I get it.
Teacher: Why didn’t you get it before?
CS3: ‘Cause I thought the dad was a drug addict and dealer.
Teacher: Well, he was a drug dealer, wasn’t he?
CS3: Yep.
Teacher: And there was a period where he was heavily addicted. So that’s quite
confusing, isn’t it? ‘Cause it has a he and it talks about his dad, but
you’ve got to think the main idea, what’s the main idea here? Anthony
Kiedis’ drug dealing dad or Anthony Kiedis?
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Teacher: Yep, so you’ve gotta work it out with the clues and you’ve gotta take
all these little, what are called pronouns, like he and I, and work it all
out.
There was also evidence of CS3’s increasingly independent use of the strategies and increased
text engagement in her independently completed classwork. When reading The 2007 Guinness
Book of World Records (Glenday, 2006), she recorded her questions such as “I wonder if
1,1015 Piersing [piercing] hurt” (sic) and “Why do people do these slilly thing’s that could put
there life in derange [danger]” (sic). Her summaries based on the same text demonstrated a
relatively high degree of synthesis by surmising that this book was about “…magnifisant people
doing crazy things” (sic). Further evidence of her ability to engage the strategies independently
was also apparent in her post‐intervention e‐asTTle test where she was able to correctly infer
the answers for questions such as “In paragraph 5 of The Challenger why does Angela forget
what she is supposed to do first?” with answers such as “She is nervous about competing in
the championship.”
Considering that CS3 adopted the use of the strategies easily, did not pose any behavioural
problems and was committed to ensuring that she improved her reading, it is difficult to
understand why she was unable to achieve the same rate of growth as her peers. It was late
into her third and final training session that the reason became apparent. It seems that CS3
had difficulty with decoding multisyllabic words and it is this issue that appears to have posed
a considerable obstacle to her comprehension development:
CS3: Hmmm, what’s that say?
Teacher: Well, sound it out.
CS3: Hero –is‐m.
Teacher: Put it altogether.
CS3: Heroism. [laughs] I don’t know.
Teacher: Heroism.
CS3: Oh. [laughs]
Teacher: Those little bits on the end of words really throw you, eh?
CS3: Yeah.
Teacher: So what you’ve got to do is look at the beginning of the word, like
hero. ‘Cause you’ve got that down and that’s pretty easy and then
figure out this part of the word. Think about where else you might
have seen –ism. So…fascism, is probably not a good example. Heroism,
communism, comedianism, oh I don’t know, I don’t even think that’s a
word.
CS3: [Laughs]
Teacher: So heroism is…
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Teacher: Uh huh. What does G‐E‐N sound like?
CS3: Gen.
Teacher: What does E‐R sound like?
CS3: Er.
Teacher: What does O‐S sound like?
CS3: Os.
Teacher: What’s I‐T‐Y?
CS3: Ity?
Teacher: Yeah, so put all those together.
CS3: Gen‐er‐os‐ity, generosss… [laughs]
Teacher: So sound it out carefully.
CS3: I know it.
Teacher: I know you know it.
CS3: Is – os, oh!!! [laughs]
Teacher: Gen‐er‐os‐ity, so put it all together.
CS3: Gen‐er‐osolo… [laughs]
Teacher: Gen‐er‐os‐ity.
CS3: Yeah! Generosity!
So while, generally able to understand spoken words, CS3 found it difficult to access their
orthographic representations, especially when confronted with the types of multisyllabic
words that were increasingly common in her class texts. Upon further investigation, it also
became apparent that she read, albeit in a mumbling fashion, aloud to herself during the first
think aloud despite being instructed to read silently. This also suggests that she had not yet
automatized her decoding skill. The deficiencies in her decoding skill stopped her from
accessing the meanings of the words that she knew aurally. It is suggested that this is the
reason why, despite following the same comprehension trajectory as her peers, she was not
able to achieve the same level of growth as they did. Decoding matters and without solid
decoding skills, CS3 was unable to access the higher levels of comprehension that her peers
were able to.
4.3.2.2 Case Study Four
Case Study Four (CS4) was a female Year 10 student. She was another student who did not
achieve the same growth as her peers. The e‐asTTle results suggest that very little difference
was made to CS4’s achievement as a result of the intervention with a statistically insignificant
movement of six raw score points from 1461 to 1467. This was below the 10 raw score point
normative shift of Year 10 students during term one.
Whilst she did not display overtly negative behaviour, CS4 could be challenging to get to work
65 | P a g e understandings of the texts she was required to read. She recorded that, despite feeling that
she was a good reader she did not like reading and was unlikely to read in her spare time in the
attitude questions at the beginning of her e‐asTTle test. CS4’s lack of progression was perhaps
a result of her negative attitude towards reading which put up somewhat of a block towards
working effectively within her ZPD. It is possible that, because she felt she was a good reader
(the opposite view of CS1), she was unable to see the benefits of learning the strategies and
applying them to text. In other words, she was unmotivated to try, whereas CS1 was at least
able to see the benefit of improving his reading skill even if he did hate it. The transcripts of
CS4’s training sessions demonstrate the relative lack of CS4’s co‐operation during the
intervention:
Teacher: What’s that comprehension strategy that we’ve been using?
CS4: Nah … umm…. finding things like commas and stuff.
Teacher: Finding commas and stuff. Do you remember that’s called looking for
text features? CS4: Yep.
Teacher: Yep, why is it important, do you think, that I’m getting you to find
those things in anything you read?
CS4: Um, ah, so I’ll be a better reader?
Teacher: Yep, but how does it make you a better reader?
CS4: Ah…pass.
So whilst CS4 was able to regurgitate the class rhetoric about becoming better readers, it is
questionable whether she thought this applied to her own reading as she often resorted to
short sentences such as “ahhh…nooooo” when asked if, for example, she had identified any
text features. This seeming lack of interaction made teaching within CS4’s ZPD difficult as
judging her true level of understanding was problematic.
CS4’s lack of buy‐in into the intervention and the interactive nature of the training sessions led
to, in the second training session, the teacher carrying the load of comprehension for CS4.
Consequently, the teacher crossed the fine line between modelling and doing the work for the
student, as this excerpt shows:
Teacher: I’m going to stop you ‘cause you’re at the start of p84. Can you just
have a quick look over [p. 84] and see if there’s any text features?
CS4: Um………. Exclamation mark…
Teacher: Yep, exclamation mark. What do exclamation marks show us?
CS4: That … they’re talking?
Teacher: Exclamation marks show that someone is shouting or speaking quite
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CS4: Yep.
Teacher: Why is that different?
CS4: Um... because... they’re talking.
Teacher: Do you know what that text feature is called?
CS4: [Shakes head] Nooo.
Teacher: Remember that’s called italics? So that writing on the side does show
us that they’re talking, but they’re doing a special type of talking aren’t
they? Are they talking out loud or...?
CS4: Um…they…
Teacher: What do you think they might be doing?
CS4: …Um…they…
Teacher: Do remember last year when we read Under the Mountain [Gee, 2009]
and the twins were able to pebble to each other?
CS4: Um…yep?
Teacher: That is what they’re doing, pebbling, or otherwise known as talking
telepathically. They can send their thoughts to each other. So when
we have, in this book, the italics, it shows us that they’re talking
telepathically, ok? Have you thought of any questions about this book?
CS4: Um…
Teacher: One of the questions I thought was what happens, because Kestrel is
taking quite a big risk going back to see her family here isn’t she? Um,
what happens if they catch her? And will she be caught? And, by
asking myself that question, it makes me think I want to keep reading
to see if I can find out the answer to that, ok?
The “ums”, “ahhhs” and extended silences demonstrated in this extract provided a
smokescreen for CS4 to hide behind as the teacher interpreted these as signals of needing help
rather than a tactical withdraw from the activity. By doing the work for the student, this
training session did not move within the student’s ZPD and, consequently, she learnt very little
from it. The lesson from this training session is that it is important that the teacher monitors
their own level of interaction and forces the student into more of the action when they are
overly reliant on the teacher’s help. This shows that there is an incredibly fine line between
helping the student to understand through modelling and taking over and this must be judged
on a case by case basis.
By the third training session, the teacher had realised that CS4 had participated very little in
the second training session. A change in the teaching forced CS4 to engage with the text more,
even though it did make for some uncomfortably long silences during the session as this
extract demonstrates:
Teacher: We’re going to ask some questions. Two of the questions are how is
67 | P a g e learn by reading this text? I need you to come up with two other
questions.
CS4: [Silence]
CS4: Is… [silence] …um…why are people driving drunk?
Teacher: Do you think that’s going to be a good question? CS4: Nah…
Teacher: Why not?
CS4: Um…I dunno…
Teacher: Well, what’s this about?
CS4: How to stop drunk driving.
Teacher: So, do you think that’s going to explain why people drink drive?
CS4: No… [silence]
Teacher: So what’s another question we could ask?
CS4: Um… how do you stop drunk driving?
Teacher: Marvellous… love that question. Got a pencil? Pen? Write that down
as number one. Why is that such a good question?
CS4: Because it’s what it’s about.
By the teacher persevering through the silences, which in previous training sessions were filled
in, CS4 was forced to think about and interact with the text. This allowed the training session
to increasingly work within CS4’s ZPD and allowed the teacher to refine CS4’s strategy use by
guiding her thinking about questions with questions that gently challenged that thinking to
higher levels. The silences not only forced CS4 into interacting with the text but it also crucially
gave her the thinking time to do so. Consequently the message from CS4’s experience is that
the adult has to be careful during one to one training sessions. They cannot assume that a
student’s silence means they have reached an impasse, and then step in. The adult needs to
carefully judge this and, at times, force the student out of their silences by simply waiting for
them to think.
Once the barrier created by CS4’s silences and short “no” answers was broken, she began to
increasingly use the strategies relatively independently and quickly as this excerpt from her
third training session demonstrates:
CS4: [Extended silent reading]
CS4: Um…just says stuff about designated drivers.
Teacher: Uh huh. Is there anything about… what was our inference?
‘Designated drivers are safer than drinking under the limit’. So, what
does it… have a look at that second bullet point down.
CS4: It says “the designated driver approach helps driving and that, um,
because, that person doesn’t drink alcohol, it doesn’t require a driver
or a passenger to drive” [somewhat indecipherable but is reading off
the text].
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CS4: Ah, yeah?
Teacher: How?
CS4: Because, they’re talking about the designated driver and how he
doesn’t give into the alcohol.
This passage demonstrates that both the teacher and the student were beginning to work
together to progress CS4’s comprehension skills. By supporting and questioning CS4’s
responses, the teacher was able to guide CS4’s thinking to higher levels. It is this type of
interaction which finally saw CS4 start to grow her comprehension in the same way as the
other students. However, the change probably began too late for this to have an impact on her
e‐asTTle data. Given more time, it could be hypothesised that CS4’s growth trajectory would
imitate that of her class mates.